Dwarven Entrapment Plan

Smack!

Flynn slapped the magic device.

Startled, Drogo hurriedly stopped her. "Please don't smash it with one slap. This is the only one we have right now."

"Why can a one-gold orc huntress spear me to death?"

Flynn stared at herself on the screen. She had just filled up her mana and transformed into a golden dragon, thinking she was about to slaughter everything in sight, only to be skewered to death by two javelins from a huntress called "Ned Leopardtail" on Drogo's board.

"Because she's three-starred. She also has the orc and hunter synergy bonuses, and her equipment is fully stacked. The fact that she didn't kill your unequipped Flynn with one javelin already means she underperformed."

"Why? Three stars only takes nine copies, doesn't it? Bring me ninety Neds and give her thirty magic items, and she still couldn't beat me."

"It's a game, sis. Games need numbers."

"What did you say?"

"Games need numbers."

"No, the part before that."

"Uh... sis?" Drogo said, somewhat puzzled.

"Good." Flynn looked thoroughly pleased. "Since I'm your elder, I demand that you play Flynn next round while I play Ned. And you're not allowed to hold my units!"

"Huh? How much older are you than me to call yourself my elder?"

"One day older is still older. Hmph!"

Twenty minutes later.

"Why?"

Flynn was about to slap the magic device again, but braked sharply in midair and redirected the blow onto her own thigh. Her firm muscles trembled slightly.

"Why can't my Ned spear me to death, while yours kills all my units with one breath?"

Only because Drogo and Flynn had known each other for so long could anyone make sense of that sentence.

On the screen, Flynn, transformed into a golden dragon, wiped out Ned and her seven accessories with three breaths.

"You can't do without a frontline. Want to learn how to play? I'll take you as my disciple." Drogo's smug, eyebrow-waggling expression had reached an almost transcendent level of punchability.

"No!" Flynn puffed up in anger, and her eyes were practically about to turn into vertical pupils.

"What about you? Where are you in this game?" Flynn absolutely had to find a way to kill Drogo in the game a few times too.

"You'll see me soon enough." Drogo pointed at the screen before him.

At stage 5-7, a dark crimson dragon appeared on the field. Eight heroes promptly beat it senseless, and it even dropped an item upon dying.

"There. Me."

If Flynn landed the final blow, it would also trigger the golden dragon roar Easter egg. Unfortunately, it had not been voiced yet.

"So? Isn't it fun?"

The auto battler was still in a fairly primitive state. Many of its icons were little more than stick drawings, quite a few effects were missing, and bugs cropped up at every turn...

But Flynn had to admit that it was truly fun—fun in a way she had never experienced before. In her heart, it had already begun to threaten mahjong's position.

Once the excitement faded, she began studying the enormous magic device before her.

She was unfamiliar with mechanical structures, but the illusion spells running on it were right in her field of expertise.

Before long, she realized that this magic device was intended for ordinary people who could not even use magic.

So Drogo wanted to bring illusion magic into every household. Naturally, illusionists would become important.

It was a grand goal that no one had ever attempted before.

It did fit Drogo's usual style rather well.

The magic device stored some spells, but its functions were incomplete. She guessed that the other portion was inside the divine corpse. It was a brilliant idea—she had never imagined spells once considered worthless could be used like this.

So Yuffie had proposed that plan to solve the problem of all eight people having to play on the same machine. That would certainly make it easier to popularize. As expected of her student.

As for the quality of the illusion models, they could only be described as existing in a superposition of excellent and garbage.

They were excellent because no illusion model of such scale and complexity had ever existed before. They were garbage because, when it came to the details, the efficiency of the inscriptions was utterly appalling.

"I can help you revise them..."

Before she could finish, Flynn noticed Drogo staring at her with shining eyes, as though he had just found a mountain of gold. The look made her scalp prickle.

"What are you looking at?"

"My future chief architect."

"I'm only helping. It's entirely because you can promote illusion magic. I-it's not like I'm working for you."

Flynn changed the subject. "Since you need illusionists, why didn't you come find me sooner?"

"I did. Back then, you said you'd touched the threshold of a brand-new realm in the art of painting, and that nobody was allowed to disturb you while you pursued art. We couldn't even get enough people for card games those days, so Xin 104 had to fill in."

Pursuing art? Flynn thought back and vaguely remembered something like that. At the time, she had thought her paintings were amazing. Once she calmed down and looked at them again, she immediately stuffed them into the fireplace.

"Still, the materials used for this magic device are far too extravagant. How could most people possibly afford one?"

The prototype had used vast quantities of precious materials during its construction: mithril, refined gold, rose crystal, cat's-eye stone, rubies, and more. Forget commoners—even minor nobles could not afford it.

"That's true. When we developed it, we ignored the cost in order to make the functions work. It'll still need a long time to optimize. But our magic device team has limited ability, so all we can do is keep experimenting through trial and error."

"I do have someone to recommend."

As expected of Twin Towers City's local power player, Flynn's connections were far broader than Drogo's.

"Barn Forge, a dwarf. He is the third dwarf in his clan's history to earn the title of Forge, and he may well be the greatest craftsman in the southern kingdom in the past two hundred years. But there's one problem: he hasn't worked for nearly fifty years. He only makes things he likes. The Craig family once offered him over ten thousand gold coins to help repair their inherited construct, but they were turned away at the door."

Seriously? The cursed Craig family still hadn't repaired that giant figurine he had his eye on? What were their descendants even doing? Once they fixed it, he still wanted to borrow it and play with it.

"What does he like?" Drogo asked. The figurine matter could wait; the auto battler was more important right now.

"Drinking, gambling, fighting, having fun, defending clan honor, proving that he's the strongest dwarf, and picking fights with those pointy-eared folk. A very traditional dwarf. In short, whatever other dwarves like, he likes even more."

"Interesting..."

Drogo rubbed his chin as his lava eyeballs spun rapidly.

"How about this? Record your voice first. Just roar with the same energy you had when you stole my food as a child."

"Huh?"

Barn Forge's great-grandfather had been a craftsman. His grandfather had been a craftsman. His father had been a craftsman. So was he.

But he was different. He was the greatest craftsman in the clan's history, which was why he had inherited the Forge title from the renowned dwarven hero Sutter Forge.

He placed his family name, Rodell, in the middle. The honor of his clan and family meant more to him than his own life.

He took off his glasses and stretched his limbs. He was getting old, and his body no longer worked as well as it once had. Back then, he could work for three days straight without sleeping.

The train engine before him had been dismantled into countless pieces. It was the new toy he had found recently.

After reaching the age of three hundred, he no longer lacked money or fame. He no longer needed anyone's recognition. He had already reached the pinnacle of his trade, and all that remained was challenging himself and studying one emerging craft after another.

The train engine was not bad. It gave him a hint of excitement he had not felt in a long time, but it was still not enough.

"Come on, let's drink at the usual place!" he called to several apprentices and assistants.

He had once been strict with his apprentices too, but now that he was old, he had come to accept things. Not every dwarf possessed his innate talent. It was good enough for them to achieve what they could.

Upon arriving in Twin Towers City, he had to admit that although humans could not hold their liquor, their brewing skills were not bad at all. Their various drinks were quite good.

Except for that stuff called cola. It tasted like medicine, was disgustingly sweet, and kept bubbling endlessly. He had no idea who liked it.

When he reached the tavern he visited most often, it seemed to have changed its signboard. He did not care, so long as the alcohol was still as good.

The moment he entered, he noticed an enormous magic device occupying a quarter of the establishment.

What was that?

Another contraption humans had come up with.

The workmanship looked rough. If he had made something like that, he would have smashed it himself.

He lifted a huge mug of alcohol and was about to drain it in one gulp when a voice suddenly came from the magic device.

"The forge never goes out, and honor endures forever!"

"Hm?"